Daily Scribble

Honey Moon Planning

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Honey moon is the most important part of getting marry.  The wedding day is more an event for family and friends, and for the formality and paper works.  The honey moon is the enjoying experience for the newly wed couple.  I am assigned the task of planning our honey moon.

Pat want to have the real papal blessing from the Pope, Rome has to be in the itinerary.  Yes, it is the real papal blessing from the Pope, face to face, not just a phony piece of paper.  We know at least two couples got the real papal blessing, we just have to go through the paper work with the Church.  I want to relax in the honey moon, so no back packing style city hopping.  Package guided tour is out of question, since it won’t work with our papal blessing schedule.  With so many constraints, I come up with a perfect itinerary.

Fly to Rome, stay there for a few days, then take Mediterranean cruise.  We will let the ship take us to visit different cities.  I already narrow my decisions down to two choices.  A 7 nights Royal Caribbean cruise or a 10 nights Celebrity cruise.  Both are round trip cruise boarding from Rome, so the traveling is minimal.  Since the ship return to Rome on 5a.m., we can go straight to the airport and catch the 12:30p.m. return flight to Vancouver.  The question is should I trade 2 extra days in Rome with visiting 3 more ports.

Daily Scribble

Hit and run

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Today I have a mysterious hit and run.  I was driving on the Sea to Sky Highway coming back from Whistler.  The road condition was pretty bad, it was snowing and the road is icy.  I drove slowly and very careful.   There was a pickup truck in front of me suddenly put on its brake, probably because the car in front of him also break.  I brake at once, but the ABS is not working.  I couldn’t turn either, the wheels has no tracking.  My car is slowly hitting the back of the pickup truck, slide to the side of the road and have half of the front buried in the snow.  The airbag is not deployed and we have 3 or 4 seconds to prepare for the impact.  Very luck, we were not hit by cars fellowing us, so no one in the car is hurt.  The first car following us somehow has very fast reaction, they manage to cut to the left and pass us.  The car fellowing turned sideway and pull over ditching into the snow.  There were quite a few cars ditched into the snow behind us.

It’s in snowing, it’s dark and it’s on the highway.  We remember the safety tips, stay in car, call the insurance company, call the tow truck company and wait for help.  I can see a few cars stopped about 50 meters ahead of us.  Probably they can’t break and have some collisions.  I would expect the driver of the pickup truck come over to get my driver license, but no one ever come by.  The police came but they ignore us and go straight to the cars stopping in the front.  They didn’t come back to ask us anything either.  When the tow truck finally came, the pickup truck is already gone.  I hit someone and he ran away, I guess it is still a hit and run.

I don’t know  what is going on.  I definitely hit someone, the front of my car is damaged.  The fend flew away, the hood and a side panel is deformed.  The pickup truck seems didn’t realize he was hit.  The good thing is that no one reports the collision to ICBC and make a claim, I can keep the same safety status.  We have speculated a few theories why the pickup truck ran away.  One possibility is the pickup is so strong that there is virtually no damage to its back.  Another possibility is the driver had alcohol, so he want to get away before the police come.  The most probably but hard to believe scenario is like this.  When our tow truck drive away, we do see a car have similar damage in the front as my car.  Remember the car following us who manage to dodge us?  I think they rear end the pickup as well.  The pickup couldn’t tell two hits from one hit, so just copy down the driver license of the other driver.

After many hours of troubles, my car finally arrived at the body shop.  I hope my car is repairable.  It would be a lot of headache if my car is totaled.  I would have to shell out extra money to buy a new car.

Daily Scribble

Booking my flight to India

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This afternoon, I was booking my flight to India.  There are not many airlines flying direct to Bangalore.  I am not adventure enough to take an internal flight inside India, so my options are limited.

The most straight forward path is taking Air Canada/Lufthansa, making a transfer in Frankfurt.  The connection time is perfect, not much time is wasted in the airport.  The itinerary looks great except it is flying via Europe.  India is exactly 12 time zones away from Vancouver, so flying west should be the same as flying east.

Only Singapore airline have direct flight to Bangalore.  Somehow, the travel booking websites somehow couldn’t route the flight via Singapore.  They always route it through Europe.  I have to print out Singapore airline’s flight schedule and try to work out the connect flights myself.  Singapore airline only flies 3 days a week form Vancouver to Singapore, so I can’t leave on Friday as planned.  The flight arriving at 11p.m and the daily flight from Singapore to Bangalore is at 10p.m.  The timing of the connect flight is not looking good.  I can also fly to San Francisco first, then to HK, then to Singapore and catch the direct flight to Bangalore.  It will be 3 stops compare to 1 stop taking Lufthansa, not very desirable either.

At the end, I book with Lufthansa to save the trouble.  For the 2nd trip, maybe I will stop by HK and try the SFO route of Singapore airline.  Too bad that HK has no direct flight to Bangalore, yet.  Dragonair will have daily flight to Bangalore starting May 1.  Taking Cathy Pacific and Dragonair, stop over in HK would be the best flight itinerary.

Daily Scribble

Big endian vs little endian

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The endian is one of the most confusing concept in computer design. I remember it took me so long to remember their difference in year 1 computer course and then I forget which one is which shortly.  The endian answers the question what is the proper byte order inside the computer, to be more specify, which bit should travel first. The big endian thinks the most significant bit should go first, while the little endian believe the least significant bit should go first.

The term big endian and little endian is coined by David Cohen in his legendary paper On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace. The terms are originated from Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. In the tale, there are two countries Lilliput and Blefuscu go on war for what is the right way to break an egg, on the big end or on the little end. They are big endian for the former one and little endian for the latter one. In the tale, Swift is satirizing the holy wars between religions with the egg war. Which end to break the egg is such a silly question that people should eat their egg any way they like. However if two computers want to communicate, they have to share the same endian. So, it is some sort of holy war in the computer world, and either side is not going to give up easily.

The little endian have their idea coming from daily language, such as English. We write characters from left to right, start with the first character, second character and so on. Thus, they think it is natural to send the least significant bit first. The big endian are inspired by the mathematicians. In maths, we write from left to right begins with the most significant digit. Each camp has its merits and has been rallying troops for the endian war.  The paper was published in 1981, almost a quarter century ago. Today, the computer world is still split along the line of endian with different protocols, architectures on each camp.  This give us lots of headache when we are building chips to bridge different protocols.

It seems the endian war will never end. As Cohen said, agreement upon an order is more important than the order agree upon. Shall we toss a coin?

電影

寶貝計劃

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Rob-B-hood 以前成年的電影﹐拍出來總是像倒模一樣﹐套套差不多﹐看多了也覺得悶。今次「寶貝計劃」狀態大勇﹐給人耳目一新的感覺。可愛趣緻的嬰兒誰不愛看﹐想出把嬰兒和動作電影﹐兩樣不干相的東西加來坐的這個編劇應記一功。電影有老中青三代男演員﹐許冠文﹐成龍﹐古天樂﹐不過最搶鏡的還是那個嬰兒﹐他才是這套戲的真正男主角。

故事是說三個神偷做世界﹐偷不到錢卻偷了個嬰兒。成龍和古天樂變湊仔公﹐鬧出笑話一大堆。原本打算是嬰兒換錢﹐不過兩個男人又拾不得。最後壞人要搶嬰兒﹐於是大打一場大團員結局。主線的劇本一般﹐犯了港產片於理不合的毛病。不過細節處理得出色﹐有讓人噴飯的笑話﹐有緊張刺激的動作﹐也有感動窩心的場面。

兩個大男人給嬰身弄得手足無措﹐又要餵奶又要換片很好笑﹐雖然有點似抄西片Pacifier。開場電梯飛身教嬰兒﹐中場嬰兒車大戰運款車﹐這兩場的動作設計巧妙生鬼。成龍抱著嬰兒入賭場那一幕最有真情﹐不想教壞嬰兒只好自己戒賭。古天樂湊仔湊上癮﹐由不負責任的男人﹐變成負責任的爸爸也很妙。

這套戲有很多地方好看﹐最悶的反而是成龍那些招牌動作場面。最後的冰窖大戰施得太長﹐不停騷成龍的猴子戲功夫。其實他這些招式耍了二十多年﹐觀眾早已看膩了。拍電影與學習一樣不進則退﹐成龍大哥怎可以靠食老本﹐不停重覆他那些動作招式呢﹖

終於寫完了所有影評﹐還清了在飛機上看的電影債。下個月我要出差飛長途機﹐恐怕又會一口氣看很多套電影﹐又要晚晚筆耕寫影評了。